Mission: Save the Environment

Fifty years ago, the World Health Organization initiated a global campaign to eradicate smallpox – a campaign that not even it believed could succeed. Yet, in just over a decade, the disease was defeated, proving that the world can come together to address shared problems.

CHEVY CHASE, MARYLAND – Picture this. It is 1966. You are standing in a government office in Washington, DC, watching a uniformed official tell a man in business attire, “Your mission is to eradicate an enemy that has killed more people than both world wars combined. You will have a paltry budget, a small team, and should you fail, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions.”

It sounds like a scene from a Hollywood movie. And, indeed, it mirrors the opening scenes of the Mission: Impossible television series that premiered that year. But it really happened, if not in precisely those words. The official was Assistant Surgeon General James Watt; the man with the mission was Communicable Disease Center (CDC) scientist Donald Henderson; and the enemy was smallpox.

The mission certainly seemed impossible. At the time, smallpox was killing as many as two million people, and infecting another 15 million, each year. Yet, like in the series, Henderson and his team at the World Health Organization defied expectations. In just over a decade, smallpox became the first – and, so far, the only – infectious human disease ever to be fully eradicated.

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Sean's command of his highly technical field is no doubt profound but seems in no way to inspire his use of analogy as a commentator. An ecological 'vaccine' might consist in rigorously enforced universal environmental regulation, and an immediate 'cure' might require the shutdown of the coal industry worldwide (followed promptly by the public hanging of their proprietors and political protectors, one would hope. After all, 'business as usual' is the disease...)

The most important thing I draw from your article is that the US and the USSR supported the smallpox effort - even if donations were limited. The problem with 'saving the environment' is that those who wield power today are strictly against such efforts. This is simple economics and nothing to do with bad morals - it is because it costs shareholders serious money to do so - especially when foreign companies can compete with them without complying. Further, politicians must largely kow-tow to business because of campaign contributions. The net result is that the best we can do is the sad joke that was Paris - an unbinding commitment to maybe, if they feel like it, keep the temperature increases below a completely unacceptable figure, or not.

Interestingly enough I was just reading an article on truthdig entitled "Hooked on Fossil Fuels Forever" Posted on Jul 15, 2016
written by Michael T. Klare / TomDispatch. The reality is that we are too political and economically addicted to fossil fuels and any attempt to get off them will only run directly against the forces which currently control much of our society. So the only force strong enough to change human behavior will be nature and it's ministrations unfortunately are never kind. It will devour us as if we didn't even exist. Sorry for the pessimism but if you are going to propose hope you better know what you are up against. The comparison between eradicating smallpox and saving the environment are hugely different because the forces arraigned against this are vastly different and are so much more complex because they are so much more intertwined into our civilization. I believe most people are too unknowledgeable to really understand the difficultly involved. This is both a metaphysical as well as a epistemological problem and needs a huge philosophical change in human thinking which I don't see, at least from my 70 years living on this world. Good luck with that though.

Thank you for an inspirational article -- but I despair of our ability to summon any collective will in an economically over-determined age in which supply and demand trumps even well being and existence.

But perhaps the key is to build some momentum though a few small victories, and to step by small step.

Human primates are part of the environment for say non-human primates, and vice versa. In a non-anthropocentric view, dna and rna code based things on this planet are quite a mutually dependent lot, e.g. human primates depending on plants or plants eating animals for some types of amino acids. On a whole other level, plants are dependent on non-dna or rna things like the sun for photosynthesis. One thing is clear,dna and rna life can't currently be eradicated by humanity, making the "environment" not something that needs saving. However, it would be great if we could learn to see the sacred value of the Earth as it allows us but also other animal types, plants and whatnot the opportunity to learn and grow. If we have to develop to learn to be happy without plundering and exterminating we might some inspiration by the rare known cases of balance with nature, like the Sentinelese people (before they get exterminated by the rise of the oceans). How about envisioning a post technological era?

@ Michael Public Well our "totale Vernichtungs" capabilities, nuclear or otherwise would face an uphill battle, to say the least, against such creatures as Deinococcus radiodurans, the thermophiles not to mention stuff that bases itself on chemosynthesis at the bottom of the oceans. There are also funny examples of surprise underground life forms too, like in the Movile cave in Romania, during 2 million years. As for the environment, it's always fluid, very unlike a snapshot give or take a few million years it can reevolve from procaryotes only to procaryotes plus monocellular eucaryotes, than multicellulars organisms etc. right up to creatures debating if saturated fats are healthy or not.

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